I love to cook. I love to bake. I love to eat. Here are some recipes I've tried and reviews for some of my favorite, and not-so-favorite foods and restaurants.

When in Vegas... Day 1

Vegas. Yep, I have to
go to Vegas. And “have” is the correct
word. I would never choose Vegas as a
destination voluntarily. It’s just not
my thing. It’s too crowded, noisy,
expensive, like I said just not my thing.
Kind of like mushrooms and cilantro, I recognize some people love it,
just not me.

Not only do I have to go to Vegas, I have to go for a full
week, flying out Sunday, not getting home until Friday night. And this time, lucky me I fly on the day we
just lost an hour of sleep. Crabby? Yes. I
had a headache before I hit the airport.

Not to be a total negative Nancy, there is one redeeming
thing in Vegas, the restaurants! I love
food so after spending 10 hours in a windowless conference room watching
PowerPoint after PowerPoint presentation I’m ready for a nice glass of wine and
a good dinner. I have three favorites
that I like to visit every time I come here, Mesa Grill, Giada and Otto. There is no particular order to these, I
think I love them all equally. The food
is fantastic, the service is impeccable and the prices aren’t outrageous. Would I like to try CraftSteak? Sure!
But $60 or more just for the steak?
Well, I don’t think my expense report would be approved.

I have two nights “free” to try new places for dinner
(already have my reservations at Otto, Mesa Grill and Giada) so my plan is to
try two burger joints and doing a comparison.
I’ve heard that the burgers at HubertKeller’s
burger place are great and a friend told me that she heard Anthony Bourdain
said the fries there were the best he’s ever eaten. I don’t know which of the many types of fries
they serve he meant, but I guess I’ll try the fries. The other is Gordon Ramsey’s Burgr.

It’s Sunday. I got to
the airport two and a half hours early because of the nightmare lines I’ve been
hearing about on the news. Apparently
the TSA at MSP Airport are claiming they just don’t have enough people to staff
appropriately during this busy spring break time. Whatever.
I’m TSA Precheck but that rarely means anything these days. If it’s busy they will shove anyone down that
line. And usually the people who have
absolutely no idea how to follow directions end up right in front of me. Not today though, I whizzed right through and
had a fun filled 2+ hours to sit and wait.
Got myself a Caribou latte, put the headphones on and read a book (and
people watched, people watching is always interesting at the airport).

I did upgrade myself to first class. By the end of this long
week I’m going to need a big fat chair and a free drink! It’s not a bad thing on the way out either. For
lunch I had the choice of a turkey and cheese sandwich or a grilled chicken and
quinoa salad. I chose the salad. Looks pretty doesn’t it? Came with a side of tomato soup, some
crackers and a cookie.

Normally I love quinoa.
Normally. Not this time… they laced the salad with CILANTRO! I can’t do cilantro. Apparently I am allergic to it because it
tastes like a chemical or soap or something so unappetizing to me that I can
taste even the smallest bit of it. So I
ate the chicken, some of the avocado (those pieces for which I could remove the
cilantro) and the soup. The crackers were
quite yummy too, not too salty, good texture and flavor.

The cookie was ok.I
love molasses cookies.They are one of
my favorites.I like ginger too.I like a little ginger in my molasses cookies
even, but not as much as in these.They
should have called them ginger cookies because that was the predominant
flavor.It was nice and chewy with the
crunch of sugar on top so it was a good cookie, don’t get me wrong, but not the
molasses cookie I was expecting. Guess I’ll have lots of room for that burger!

So with the exception of the cilantro, the flight was just
fine.The trip from the airport to the
hotel was just fine… sort of, lots of construction and worse than normal
traffic when I arrived.

The line to get checked in was the worst of any of the
hotels at which I have stayed before (Venetian, Mandalay Bay, Wynn) but it
moved pretty well. I requested an airport-facing
room so I could watch the planes come and go from Area 51. They accommodated that request. I have a view of the airport and of a giant picture of David Copperfield's head!

It was a long walk to my room and after getting settled I
thought I’d make my way to the conference center so I knew where it was, then
head to dinner.This is where my day
went awry.

I stopped at the concierge to pick up tickets to a tour of
Hoover Dam I had scheduled. This is when I realized I didn’t have my driver’s
license or corporate credit card! The
woman assured me it was no problem, they could find my reservation anyway. Umm… 1.
I didn’t make the reservation with my corporate card, I’m quite sure
that expense report would get denied and 2. It’s not ok that I didn’t have
either my DL or my credit card!

So after she printed off my ticket and showed me the map of
where I had to go for the tour, I raced back to my room and scoured it for the
ID and credit card. When I didn’t find
them right away, I called lost and found, and was put on hold. While on hold I found them. WHEW!

OK, let’s try this again, let’s head to dinner! I walked to the conference center which was a
good 15 minute walk and I walk fast! I asked
the security person standing there if there was a “short cut” and she said
no. Bummer! So I asked her the best way to get to
Mandalay Bay. She gave me directions and
off I went. I was wearing my favorite
hat. One I had bought years ago at Cuvaison winery. It blew off my head. It blew to a spot I couldn’t get it without
scaling a fence. I sadly left my
favorite hat there and headed to Mandalay Bay.

I don’t think I took the best route.A lot of it was off the beaten path which was fine in daylight but I was
already planning a cab ride home!According to Google Maps it is 0.8 miles from the MGM to Mandalay Bay, a
17 minute walk.It took me at least that
long and I walk fast.

Once in the casino I had to find Burger Bar.I asked at the Concierge and they said “it’s
in the shops.”With those helpful
directions I headed off to “the shops.”I found it.It’s a tiny
place.I sat at the bar where the very
cute bar tender kept calling me “love.”Yes,
he got a good tip but not just for that.My water glass was kept full and he kept the wine and dinner on separate
checks for me.

So howwas the
burger?I chose the American Classic, burger,
American cheese, crispy bacon (that was how it was advertised on the menu!) tomato and lettuce on a sesame bun.It was good. Not “oh my god the best burger I’ve
ever had” but good. The bacon was not crispy. I'm a crispy bacon person and it was not crispy, I left most of it on the plate. As for the burger, I think the ones I
make are just as good, maybe better. It was juicy, not dry and perfectly
cooked. It had good beef flavor, you didn’t just taste the toppings, but like I
said, not over the top fantastic.

And the fries? No
offence to Anthony Bourdain but I’ve had better fries. They were good, nothing wrong with them,
crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside and perfectly salted. But they were fried in canola oil so they
were just fries. Maybe Mr. Bourdain had
one of the other varieties.

After dinner I walked back to Mandalay Bay and caught a cab
back to the MGM. It wasn’t quite dark
yet and the loss of my favorite hat was still bugging me so I decided I was
going to scale the wall! And I did! And
I got my hat and I’m not in jail, at least not yet. I’m sure I was caught on a number of cameras.

And now I’m pooped.My day will start with a conference call with work at 7AM tomorrow.Let’s hope tomorrow goes a bit better than
today did.

My intention this morning was to have Lemony Eggs Florentine, from Williams-Sonoma, for breakfast. It sounded delicious, and almost as imp...

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Hello and welcome to my blog. My passions are food(cooking, baking, eating out, just plain eating!), good wine, a good book and really good friends. I'm lucky enough to have quite a bit of all of those.
I'm also a 9-time walker in the Breast Cancer 3-Day and yes, I'm signed up for my 10th this year.
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